


Return To Start

by Merfilly



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-01
Updated: 2009-10-01
Packaged: 2018-01-13 13:26:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1228057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A new start after the divorce</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Memories Burning Hot

Dinah felt like the heat was beating down on her, pushing her into the concrete as she left the would-be mugger gasping for breath and holding his ribs. The cops were close enough. 

She didn't even think about the fact she took to the rooftops. A swing on a fire escape, a solid throw of her bottom half, and she just kept going higher, until she was at a cathedral.

Sitting on the slop of an eave, Dinah looked out over the city she was still, for some unfathomable reason, living in.

"Mama, I never should have come back. When will I learn?" She shifted, hands feeling scorched through her gloves from the heat on the roof. She would be so happy when this late heat broke, even more pleased when winter came with its cooling presence. "Not that it's going to be cold here." She found herself longing for the snows and icy winds of Gotham, and had to snort at herself. "Dinah, you're nuts. That just means Victor comes out to harass us more, there."

Still, when she finally moved back toward the hotel she was staying in, it was with that longing firmly in place, the wish for winter in Gotham. It masked her real desires, let her subconscious work around her pride nicely.

After all, there really wasn't much chance of making things work with Barbara this time, not after all that was said and done already.

* * *


	2. Visitor in the Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dinah goes to where she needs to be

The hint of an alarm brought Barbara up out of her sleep, before she realized it had been silenced. Nor did any others trip, but she was alert. Either someone good had gotten in, or someone she knew had come to visit and she was in no mood for visitors.

Escrima in hand after she'd transferred to her chair, she moved silently out of the bedroom to lie in wait for the intruder, judging off where the alarm had been triggered...only to find Dinah Lance-Queen, former chairwoman of the Justice League, quite consciously standing near the entrance of the living room.

"Ever heard of knocking?" Barbara asked irritably.

"Cass said you'd just tell me to go away." Dinah tried for flippant, failed, and sighed. "I needed to see you."

"Why? Come to admit I was right?"

That made the blonde heroine flinch violently, as she knew her divorce was public knowledge to the heroes' community. When so many had come to the original, false wedding, how could it not be? She wondered, in the part of her mind that was never serious, who had won the pool at Warrior's over the length of the marriage.

"No, Barbara. Come to admit I was wrong a lot longer ago than that," Dinah said in a tired voice. She moved to sit down on the couch. "When I said I needed to move on, back with Sin, back after the deal with Shiva."

Now Barbara could not help but ease back on her own irritation, her anger, because that? Had not been anything she expected. "Dinah?"

The older woman looked up tired and weary and … lost. "When I went to Shiva, it was to learn better ways to protect what I believed in, and I almost lost myself. I could not admit that to you, I could not accept the expanded team, I could not admit to you how far I fell...so I ran. I wanted the world to be fixed, all the horrors put away, and I fell back into Ollie, because he was a part of those simpler days. Even losing Sin wasn't enough to make me stop clinging to a past that was as fractured as my present, just because it felt safer for its familiarity." She met Barbara's eyes. "I lost you, because I could not show you how lost I had gotten.

Barbara waited a long moment to reply to that, taking it all in. "I did not expect this," she admitted. "But if you're here looking for a rebound, I'm not the right person to come to."

Dinah's head snapped up, pride in every line. "Like I would!" she snapped.

Babs smiled slowly. "However, if you're here to see about finding yourself, it so happens I'm doing a little self-exploration..."

Dinah smiled. "I think I can handle that...if there's a spare bed."

"I think there's room," Babs assured her. "There might even be a little Thai in the fridge."

"Alright then." The two women smiled; they had a new beginning, for now.


End file.
